Our Stewardship in practice series highlights insights from the facilitators behind IPAA Advantage and the practical ideas they bring to the key capability areas shaping today’s public sector. In this edition, William Pegg explores how professionals can build the trust, credibility and stakeholder understanding needed to influence decisions, even without formal authority.

Stewardship is often associated with formal leadership and responsibility for the decisions an organisation makes. But it is also exercised around those decisions: by the people who bring expertise, surface risks, challenge assumptions and help leaders consider perspectives they may not otherwise see.

For professionals working in these roles, stewardship means looking beyond the immediate priorities of their own function and considering how their expertise and judgement can contribute to better decisions and, over time, stronger organisational outcomes.

For William Pegg, managing director of Synthesis Group Australia, becoming a trusted adviser is an important expression of that responsibility.

“Trust is not conferred by title, seniority or subject matter expertise. It is earned.”

For William, trust starts with demonstrating value in a way that matters to the stakeholder.

“Being technically right is not the same as being organisationally useful.”

Technical expertise becomes useful when it is connected to the stakeholder’s priorities and the outcome they are trying to achieve.

Understand their agenda

William makes an important distinction between rapport and genuine understanding. You can have an excellent relationship with someone while knowing very little about what is driving their decisions, what they are accountable for or where they are under pressure.

His advice is to start with the information already available. Organisational strategies, divisional plans, performance measures, budget commitments and ministerial priorities can all help build an informed view. Rather than asking a stakeholder to explain information you could reasonably have discovered yourself, arrive with a considered view and use the conversation to test it.

“Based on the divisional plan and the work currently underway, my understanding is that your priorities are X and Y, and the major pressure is Z. Have I understood that correctly, and what am I missing?”

That can require confidence because your assessment may be incomplete.

“Being corrected is not a poor outcome.”

The correction gives you better information and demonstrates that you have made an effort to understand the stakeholder’s world.

Create a different experience

Understanding a stakeholder’s agenda is only the foundation. To shift the relationship dynamic, the stakeholder also needs to experience the value of that understanding.

That might mean decoding a complex process, removing a recurring obstacle, separating myth from fact or identifying a practical first step they had not considered.

“If you want the relationship to change, you must create a different experience of working with you. Change starts with the adviser.”

Over time, those experiences can reposition an adviser from someone who provides a service or specialist knowledge to someone who can contribute strategically to the stakeholder’s priorities.

Challenging with credibility

Being trusted does not mean always agreeing.

In a public sector environment, questioning the thinking of a senior stakeholder can feel risky. William argues that respect for hierarchy should not be confused with assuming senior leaders possess every piece of information relevant to a decision.

Advisers need to demonstrate that they understand the territory and can draw on relevant experience, judgement and lessons learned.

“Trusted advisers need to make their professional ‘scar tissue’ visible.”

This is not about reciting achievements. It is about using relevant experience to give stakeholders confidence in the perspective being offered.

Raising a material risk or offering an alternative view is therefore a professional obligation, not simply an optional act of courage.

“You are not questioning someone to undermine them; you are helping them make a better-informed decision.”

William suggests thinking about challenge across three dimensions: content, approach and timing.

Distil the content to what matters, connect the challenge to the outcome the stakeholder is seeking and choose a moment when they have the capacity to hear it.

From individual capability to organisational capability

William argues that organisations should not depend on a handful of exceptional individuals. Understanding stakeholders, translating expertise and contributing constructively to decisions need to become consistent and repeatable ways of working across teams and functions.

“When the tide comes in, all the boats should rise.”

Stewardship is not only about contributing well today. It is about strengthening the ways of working that help an organisation continue to make good decisions over time.

Put it into practice

Explore William Pegg’s IPAA Advantage programs, including Business partnering unpacked and Influencing without authority for EAs, which translate these ideas into practical approaches for building trust, understanding stakeholder priorities and contributing as a strategic partner.